Salon: "In death, a child star's reduced to a scripted line that enraged him for most of his life"

Gary Coleman: Damned by a catchphrase
Even in death, the child star is reduced to the one scripted line that enraged him for most of his life Video
Heather Havrilesky

http://www.salon.com/news/gary_coleman/index.html?story=/ent/tv/heather_havrilesky/2010/05/28/gary_coleman_dies



Pray that your life's work won't someday be reduced to a single catchphrase. That's the moral that Gary Coleman leaves with us in the wake of his death by brain hemorrhage at the age of 42. As onlookers tweeted "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Jesus?" to each other, reminiscing about the "Diff'rent Strokes" star's one claim to eternal life, it's hard not to contemplate the purgatory of being assaulted by that one stilted, clownish phrase everywhere you go. Imagine hearing those same four words, written by some smart-ass writer you may never have met — hearing them over and over and over again. At the coffee joint, at the restaurant, at the hotel, there's that sound again, the sound of someone imitating your voice at age 10, the voice of an indignant child.

Now imagine that you've never lost the stature of a child, adding insult to injury. Imagine the rage that you'd feel, encountering that stupid catchphrase that has nothing at all to do with you — an adult, a real live human being, not a cartoon character.

It's no wonder Coleman seems to have spent a great deal of his time as an adult bouncing between depression and outrage. His health problems and financial struggles loomed in the background, sure, but Coleman himself was more than a little preoccupied with trying to do something pretty simple that proved to be impossible: scrape that stupid catchphrase out of his picture. For this, he appeared on VH1's "The Surreal Life" and other shows, hoping against hope that he could present a new human being, an adult, not a plucky, fictional adopted boy named Arnold, to the world.

Coleman had problems with anger. It's hard to imagine not struggling with anger, considering his circumstances. He appears to have spent the past 10 years appearing on reality TV shows, being interviewed on cheesy tabloid shows like "The Insider," and appearing in cheap commercial spots in which he's the brunt of the joke.